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The varied conceptions of Romanticism in Byron, Shelley and Keats
The Romantic Movement culminated in the works of Byron, Shelley and Keats. They all died very young. Byron and Shelley are called Revolutionary Romantics (they defended the idea of liberty) 'Lord George Gordon Byron' '1788-1824 - inherited a baronetcy, but lacked money to support his title. He was born with a club-foot and felt inferior. It had a profound effect on his future temperament. A close friend of Shelley . In 1812 he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold and became very famous. He was born into family with bad reputation. *He wrote his first poems at Cambridge *Travelled to many countries. He continued writing when he returned to England. Wanted to fight against tyranny and oppression. He felt for suppressed nations. He participated in the Carbonari movement against the Austrian Habsburgs. He took part in an expedition to help the Greek people in their fight against the Turkish rule . Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage * Full of romantic features but sometimes in comic manner. It starts as a story of medieval knight but the medieval background disappears as well as archaic expressions. Then come reflections of today political situation in Europe. About Europe’s nations – a kind of a travelogue with many side stories. The reader almost forgets the hero. He’s mentioned only several times. In the 3rd and 4th cantos he disappears and merges into the person of narrator. On art, history, nature, contemporary events in Europe. Much more offensive than the first two. He now fully empathizes with the hero. * The travel shifts into Byron’s journey for Europe 1809-11 which he made as a voluntary exile after his unhappy marriage. It’s a kind of gentleman’s travel diary with reflections about war, politics etc. Cain * Drama, rewrites the bible. He is on the side of Cain against Able. In his titanism he doesn’t approve of the servility to God. Blasphemous interpretation of the bible. Don Juan * Poem very witty, entertaining. One of the greatest mock-heroic English epic. It is written in very complicated stanzas. * Unlike the other romantics Byron didn’t revolt against the neoclassical tradition of satire and reason. In fact developed it still further. * A far cry from Don Juan of the legend. Is not a sexual athlete but on the contrary, he is sexually passive. In fact a victim of the many women who came across his past. * Only a step away from the 19th century novel as the epic element is very strong * A young Spanish aristocrat at the 2nd half of 18th century. He had a strict education but an affair with a married woman at 16. In order to avoid a scandal, parents send him on voyage. Ship is wrecked. He is the only to save on a Greek island. He meets a young girl. She nurses him, he falls in love with her. She is the only woman whom he genuinely loves. Her father returns, Juan is injured and sent to slavery. She dies of broken heart. In Istanbul Juan is disguised as a woman and bought for harem. After lascivious scenes he escapes to Balkan. Fights on the side of Russians against Turks. Sent on a diplomatic mission to St. Petersburg to the court of Catherine the Great. The latest favorite and latest lover of the Empresses. Sent on another diplomatic mission to warmer climate of England. Attractive personality. Darling of higher society. Chased by women. * To achieve irony and sarcasm Byron mixes styles. Uses colloquial expressions in formal style and vice versa. * Also romantic in its display of personality and individual. * Focus on the subjectivity of Don Juan. There follows a wonderfully satirical description of contemporary English society. In Childe Harold we find all effective romantic features – medieval topic, a cast-away character, love to nature, loath of tyranny, love for everything cast-away, uncivilized. Byron creates his own rhapsodic style and reveals some connections with 18th century. ''The Giaour , The Corsair – his characteristic heroes who made him famous, in his epic poems, called the Byronic hero. A rebellious cast-away, sinner but still irresistible. Overpowering, it’s a new fascinating character and for the readers it was the author himself. A young man of stormy emotions who avoids humanity. He wanders through life weighed down by a sense of guilt for mysterious sins of his past. He is to some extent, modeled on the life and personality of Byron himself. Byron felt guilty because he had slept with his sister. Percy Bysshe Shelley , 1792-1822 * From artistic family. Started revolting against institutions of church, marriage. The most rebellious of all romantic writers. Most consistent in his revolt against the institutions of his time. * Politic and philosopher. Influenced by French revolution, French rationalism and English non-conformist philosopher William Godwin. Influenced by Greek skepticism, idealism of Plato, development of man and poet > a quest = hledání, for a world that would be socially just, harmonious, free love and would be natural. * His contemporaries found him to be immoral. But a visionary skeptic. He found out it was not enough to change the institutions in order to create a better world. Started focusing on individual moral regeneration. > deepening despair in his poetry, development from a social vision towards individual skepticism * Started as a founder of sexual freedom. Sees love more as destroyer than a preserver. There are rapid switches from despair to ecstasy. * After 6 months sent out of Oxford because of his pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism . Atheism = a shocking word in English. His parents disowned him. He started fighting for different kinds of causes. Helped the Irish rebels against the British. a journalist: * Defended a young woman against her father. She was only 16. He fell in love with her, eloped with her. Later he fell in love with Godwin’s daughter. His first girl drowned herself. He wanted to live with both of them, was forbidden custody for his 2 children with Hariette. * Mary Godwin = Mary Shelley (wrote Frankenstein), she was only 18 when she wrote it. Extremely talented, her 2 children died and she fell into depression. * Shelley was genuine in his thought of free love. He thought it’s immoral to live with his first wife when he doesn’t love her anymore. * Poems of Shelley’s majority, philosophy of Plato from his early childhood. He lived in 2 worlds: 1. everyday experience (shadows acc. to Plato), suffering, he found intolerable, 2. an imagine world (world of ideas) , absolute justice, goodness and love. The Cosmos was divided for him between the passing shadow level and the creation of the world of ideas, eternal world, out of time. * Always thought the manifestation of something else beyond the present and beyond the object. In his poetry the objects are not important as such, because he sees something else behind them. Ode to the West Wind * Describes the wind x he means a social change which can come. Best of his known poems. Autumn wind buries the old year and prepares new spring. Prometheus Unbound * Lyrical drama, tragedy, theme: tyranny and revolution. Prometheus is romantic. He never yields to Jupiter x he overthrows Jupiter’s power. Prometheus is therefore the archetypal man. His message is the necessity of self-liberation of human kind can overthrow of any authority. This drama is a vision, drama of emancipation from political and social institutions. poetry: ''Epipsychidion ' – altraromantic. Believes the souls of lovers becomes one. The best way of doing it is when the loves are siblings – altraromantic concept of poetry.' Adonais – elegy on the death of John Keats John Keats , 1795-1821 * His father was a stable keeper, parents died of tuberculoses when he was a child. Was apprentice to a physician (doctor). His social status was very low. * The cult of beauty and and the cult of antiquity (ancient Greek art) had the greatest impact on him. Died when 26 years old of tuberculoses. Only 6-7 years of work. Best poems from year 1819: Isabella , Lamia , Předvecer sv. Anežky * 1st poem was very ambitious: Endymiou * Had to suffer severe criticism. He was looked down and was recommended that he leave poetry to the cultured. This criticism was a great blow to him. Disappointed. * Saw the first symptoms of tuberculoses 1820 and was destitute (without money). One of the greatest poets in English history. Wrote many types of work – drama in verses, epos, epic poems etc. * Loved a young woman was unaciprotated. * In 1818 leaves to Italy. Is buried in Rome as is Shelly who died in a storm. * In his last year of life he wrote several odes. Among the best poems in English: Ode to Psyche Ode on Melancholy - Odes are concerned with antiquity, art, nature, mutability – proměnlivost, Ode on a Grecian Urn * Art that defies (vzdoruje) mutability. About a Greek vase. Both the human figures and nature enjoy permanent spring and youth to that the boughs (větve) cannot shed the leaves and human love doesn’t change. * Contrast of eternal spring on the vase and the permanent mutability of nature processes. Ode to a Nightingale * In this poem he puts in opposition seeming stillness of a bird’s song which hasn’t changed for centuries and the world where “Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, /Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow.” * The poem describes poet’s desire to dive into the song and deliquesce into its immortality and to get rid f the world “where men sit and hear each other groan” – it sounds like a hyperbole but it is Keats’ reaction on his brother’s death. * First he thinks about drugs and wine as means how to merge with the bird and about becoming part of “immortality” he chooses “I will fly to thee... On the viewless wings of poesy” Although he flies with the bird (in his imagination) he can’t get rid of thoughts about death, thanks to this bird these thoughts are only less painful. * In 7th stanza he in beautiful words describes ancient ages, which used to hear the same song. * For him thought and feeling must have existed in harmony. Body and soul in balance. * In few four lines he describes poet’s life. * 3rd stanza – uses short syllables – it evokes short, quick motions. * All odes explore weights to escape or transcendent mutability. In these poems his conception of beauty differs from Shelly’s conception. Shelly stressed the spiritual aspect of nature. Keats stressed the sensual, material beauty of the world. Keats loved the tangible earth, gives direct sensual perception of it. Shelly never saw an object or emotion in itself but always the idea behind it. * Imagery – Shelly’s images usually of swift motion. Keats’s tangible images are images of stillness. Keats doesn’t want things to change. Was against mutability, wanted to keep permanence of beauty.